The Things We Cannot Say(63)

“You...you what? But...”

“The town is Trzebinia, right?”

I stare at him in disbelief.

“How could you even know that?”

“You left the tabs open on the laptop...” He shrugs, then his gaze meets mine again. “You can email her and do some planning, but the gist of it is you fly out Monday night so you’ll arrive in Krakow on the Tuesday. She’s booking a hotel for you and she’ll meet you there Wednesday morning and take it from there.”

I panicked when I booked the tickets, but that was a blistering act of rage and it was something I was half intending to undo. This panic is different; it feels a little bit more like fear, because I have a sneaking suspicion I’m about to find myself well and truly out of my depth. I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to take some deep breaths, because I have no idea whether I should yell at Wade for babying me or thank him for helping me. I look up at him suddenly as I try to decide how to react, but my chest constricts when I see how he’s sitting.

His shoulders have slumped, and he’s staring at the sudsy tiles on the floor, utter misery in his gaze. He feels my eyes on him, though, and he raises his chin to look back at me. As our eyes lock, I feel so many things—sadness that things between us feel so broken, confusion because I still don’t know how to react to his intervention here, and love. Love, maybe most of all. The man has broken my heart more times than I can count in the last few years, and he’s let me down, and he’s let our son down. But at the end of the day, the love I have for him hasn’t waned even a little bit, and I am furious with myself that he’s ever had cause to think otherwise.

“You know, for months...maybe even years...I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it all better,” he says heavily. Weariness crosses his face, even as he shifts to avoid my gaze again. “I have everything I ever wanted in life. You. This house. My job. This family...for the most part. But every day it feels like you slip a little further away from me and you’re the key to it all. If I lose you, Alice...the rest of it goes too.”

There’s a rawness in this declaration that takes my breath away. Wade reaches for my hand, and he holds it against his cheek, then closes his eyes. I stare down at him, sitting there so vulnerable and, well, sitting on our toilet seat, of all of the places in the world we could have had this conversation. It turns out I do have some tears left after all, because as I see my handsome, brilliant husband so desperate at last to fix us when for so long I’ve feared he didn’t even care that we were broken, my vision blurs again.

“Babcia means the world to you, and you mean the world to me,” he whispers now. “I love her too, of course, but...even though I said stupid things and you were angry, I know you wouldn’t have booked those tickets if, on some level, you didn’t want to go. So—knowing that—I’m going to do everything in my power to help you to get there.”

“I think you’re conflating two disparate issues,” I say unevenly. He gives me a wry look.

“Am I?”

“Babcia’s situation has nothing to do with...”

“Let’s do a thought experiment,” Wade says. He releases my hand, then leans back against the toilet cistern and raises his eyebrows at me. “Imagine a situation where we had our second child and he happened to be exactly like his very gifted big sister. No...challenges. Tell me what your life would look like by now?”

I can’t let myself picture that. I can’t let myself want a different son, not for a single second. We got the son we got. I love him just the way he is, and I always will. I stiffen and shake my head.

“You know what it would look like.”

“Humor me, Ally. Would you have gone on this trip if we had more typical seven-and ten-year-old children?”

In a heartbeat.

I already hate this game, but it brings startling clarity. I keep telling myself my family needs me to stay. But maybe it’s not my family—not Callie or Wade or the group collectively that hold me back from going away for a few days. It’s Eddie, because unlike my brilliant husband and equally brilliant daughter, Eddie needs me. Wade stands, and he rests his hands on my shoulders gently. I reluctantly meet his gaze.

“You’d have gone on the trip, Ally,” he whispers. “Because you would have trusted me to look after our kids if Edison had been born different.”

“I do trust you,” I say, but the words are stiff so the lie is unconvincing. Wade sighs, then he tenderly brushes a wet tendril of hair from my shoulder.

“We were always going to go to Europe, weren’t we?” he says softly. “Shit, I’ve been half a dozen times for conferences and you never even blinked an eye while you waited back here at home for me. We were going to be the family who took their kids on overseas holidays, to broaden their horizons and show them the world. I know that’s not really possible for us at the moment, but it was something you always wanted, even more than I did. You took so many great holidays as a kid with Pete and Julita, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to take this trip to go on a holiday,” I say defensively.

“I know. I’m not even saying that. I’m saying...this means something to you, and this is the first time I’ve seen you reaching for something beyond the kids in years.”

“The kids are important. They’re...this family is my life’s work, in the same way that your job and your research is yours.”